'A parent's love for a child, you probably know this yourself, it's pretty bottomless. It goes down into the guts of the world. But a child's love for a parent is different. It goes up. It's more ethereal. It's not quite present on the earth.'
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Summary
'A parent's love for a child, you probably know this yourself, it's pretty bottomless. It goes down into the guts of the world. But a child's love for a parent is different. It goes up. It's more ethereal. It's not quite present on the earth.'
Description
A parent’s love for a child, you probably know this yourself, it’s pretty bottomless. It goes down into the guts of the world. But a child’s love for a parent is different. It goes up. It’s more ethereal. It’s not quite present on the earth.’
In present-day Melbourne, a man attempts to piece together the mystery of his father’s apparent suicide as his young family slowly implodes. At the ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, in 1976, a man searching for salvation must confront his capacity for violence and darkness. And in a not-too-distant future, a woman with a life-altering decision to make travels through a climate-ravaged landscape to visit her estranged father.
In Moonland is a portrait of three generations, each grappling with their own mortality. Spanning the wild idealism of the 70s through to the fragile hope of the future, it is a novel about the struggle for transcendence and the reverberating effects of family bonds. This long-awaited second outing from Miles Allinson, the multi-award-winning author of Fever of Animals, will affirm his reputation as one of Australia’s most interesting contemporary fiction writers, and urge us to see our own political and environmental reality in a new light.
Critic Reviews
“‘A story of our hearts, all broken, full, mystifying. Observant, sublime prose.’ TARA JUNE WINCH, AUTHOR OF THE YIELD
‘[A]n ambitious and gripping story of parenthood, utopias and environmental collapse … In Moonland is an astounding book that feels so epic in scope for a novel that is only 240-odd pages long. Fans of Allinson’s first book have much to look forward to with his second, a skilful and existential examination of humanity in the Anthropocene.’ BRAD JEFFERIES, BOOKS + PUBLISHING
A joy to read, with its relaxed authority of tone, its complex emotional depths, and its curious, daring beauty.’ HELEN GARNER
Wild, tender, fatalistically hilarious, and utterly enthralling. Allinson’s complex insight and love for the people of this novel renders them as real as difficult kin and just as inescapable.’ JOSEPHINE ROWE, AUTHOR OF HERE UNTIL AUGUST
‘A thrilling novel about filial obedience, yearning, and failing that shows three wildly different journeys, exposing the battered and bulging heart that propels each. Like the best, it has me wondering how my own heart is propelled.’ TIM ROGERS
‘In Moonland contains everything I want from a novel. It’s heart-breaking, funny, ruthless, and in the final section takes an enormous risk that works so perfectly that any other conclusion seems impossible. I love a finely turned sentence, and this book is awash with them.’ ROBERT GOTT, AUTHOR OF THE ORCHARD MURDERS
Praise for Fever of Animals:
‘The play between truth and fiction, between the writing self and the self written, is one of the great pleasures of Fever of Animals… audacious, clever, and original’ AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW
‘This is the book on everyone's lips right now … Offbeat and superbly written.’ CANBERRA WEEKLY ”
Miles Allinson's accomplished second novel-the follow-up to his moving and deeply personal 2015 debut Fever of Animals-is an ambitious and gripping story of parenthood, utopias and environmental collapse, told across several interconnected narratives. The narrator of the first section is Joe, a young father dealing with a relationship breakdown as he becomes obsessed with resolving the mystery of his father, Vincent: whether his death was a suicide or an accident, and the meaning of the photo of his dad as a young man in an orange robe. Bit by bit, Joe puts together the mysterious scenes his father was involved with-featuring UFO sightings and transcendental meditation; guns, drugs and psychics; hippy communes and the failed promises of the post-WWII era. In the next section, we are taken back to 1976 and the cataclysmic time Vincent spent at an ashram in Pune with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (the same guru who was one subject of the Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country). The book ends in the near future with Joe's daughter Sylvie navigating a dystopic police state scorched by climate change and on her own journey to reconnect with her father. The characters are complicated and engaging: Joe is detached and haunted but has an occasionally humorous outlook; Vincent exhibits tenderness and naivete but has an unpredictable, violent edge; Sylvie, meanwhile, carries the burden of unhealed generational wounds, as well as having to deal with the practical realities of living in a world ruined by those who came before her. In Moonland is an astounding book that feels so epic in scope for a novel that is only 240-odd pages long. Fans of Allinson's first book have much to look forward to with his second, a skilful and existential examination of humanity in the Anthropocene. Brad Jefferies is the digital editor at Books+Publishing.
About the Author
MILES ALLINSON is a writer and an artist, and the author of the multi award-winning novel Fever of Animals. He lives in Melbourne.
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